


for our vivid days

by ewagan



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Character Study, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 03:17:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15832668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewagan/pseuds/ewagan
Summary: he is a miracle under your hands, in your hands





	for our vivid days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toriningen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toriningen/gifts).



after is a mess. 

after is moving canvases, paints, clothes, a life. after is chaos, your heart pounding in your chest and your ears ringing. after is learning to live with goemon, the ice in your veins. after is learning about yourself, about resiliency and pain and the heaviness your thin shoulders can carry, how to keep going despite how everything feels like it’s falling apart.

after is slowly taking stock of all the things you still have, and the things you have lost. sayuri sits in leblanc now, and you have answers for questions you never asked. you have the truth, something that cuts you every time you turn it over to consider it again. you have broken foundations, pieces to put together until the world is something you can understand again. you have new friends, who will come running if only you ask.

after is akira's upturned palm, waiting for you to take it.

 

* * *

 

there are so many things you have to do, so many things to consider. the dorms are loud and busy with the bustle of other students, and your hand trembles every time you pick up a brush. you haven’t been able to focus since madarame’s confession, and everything you produce feels empty and worthless.

by now, there are very few people in school who don’t know who you are. once, they envied you for being the student of madarame, favoured and elevated. now, everyone looks at you like a criminal, or with pity. you’re not sure which is worse, only that the looks are unbearable. even your teachers look at you like that, like you are guilty by association, or with pity for having been so badly taken advantage of.

your pencil lead breaks because you are pressing down too hard, leaving a black mark on an otherwise empty page.

you wonder if you are breaking again, now faced with the truth of your reality.

 

* * *

 

there are days you still think about madarame, about your childhood. one of your earliest memories is of his hand guiding yours, creating an imperfect circle. you’d been delighted by it, and he had laughed with you, telling you one day you would be a fantastic artist. maybe ultimately it was for his own profit, but he was still the one who taught you how to hold a brush, who praised your first attempts at painting.

perhaps he had been a shitty mentor, but he had been _your_ mentor. sometimes you sit in your dorm and miss him, miss that old shack and the creaking floorboards, feel guilty for missing it because you know that this is supposed to be better.

you tell this to akira, confess the guilt and the relief and the fear. your words are halting, difficult. it’s strange that you’ve spent so long thinking about this, it should be easier to talk about. but your eloquence fails you and you speak in aborted sentences. you will miss the last train, he needs to close the shop. but he sits across you in the tiny booth and listens to you as you talk, tells you it's okay to feel the way you feel. his hands are damp from doing the dishes, but they're warm and curled around yours as you look at sayuri and wonder if your teacher had ever cared about you.

_he must have loved you, even a little._

_how do you know?_

the way he smiles at you is so sad, so soft. your hands itch for a pencil, a pen, _something_ — so you can impress it somewhere and make it something you can remember.

_you are so easy to love, yusuke._

 

* * *

 

make new memories. paint them over, make them anew. remember you are allowed to hurt, to feel pain and sorrow and regret, to love someone whom you believed loved you. let yourself grieve all the things you knew, the things you have lost. maybe it is better to have lost them, but it does not mean you cannot grieve their loss.

start small. the curve of a smile, the slope of shoulders. it doesn't have to be anything special.

just a new beginning.

 

* * *

 

 _i don't know if i can do it,_ you confess one night, when it's late and you're the last one at leblanc. you came hoping that sayuri would inspire you again, stop the trembling in your hands and the unsteadiness in your heart. you wonder if you are a fraud too, having studied under one.

 _you can._ you wonder how he can be so sure of this thing that you are not. his hand reaches to rest on yours, to still the tremor, to reassure. _you can do anything you want, yusuke._

it doesn't feel like it, when you look at the stack of blank canvases and the ruined pages of your sketchbooks. your school teacher tells you it's fine when you submit lackluster pieces for your classes, but you wonder if you will ever be able to paint again, or if your talent was another one of madarame's many lies.

in the quiet of leblanc however, with his hand holding yours, you begin to believe that maybe, just _maybe_ , it is possible.

you will make it, somehow.

 

* * *

 

in between all these excursions to planetariums and palaces and parks, you find yourself reaching for him more often. he never turns you down, always an open palm waiting for you.

reaching for him becomes something easy, and you are safe in the knowledge he never refuses you. he listens to you, he remembers the things you tell him, even though you know you have a tendency to ramble. he invites you into the group and firmly makes you one of them, gives you a new place to belong.

somewhere along the line, you realise you could love him.

 

* * *

 

try. fail. remember this is part of the process of creating, of making something. it’s not always perfect, and you don’t have to be perfect. you can start again.

look at all these things you have accumulated, the new experiences and feelings. consider again desire, as you have depicted it. it is meant to be a reflection of people’s hearts, a truth you gleaned from inside the collective cognition of people. but desire is not all that exists in the human heart. even when faced with all the distortion in mementos, when faced with the truth of desire, it was not the only thing to exist in the human heart.

paint it over, start again. 

 

* * *

 

_i wish we could go back to the beginning._

he's looking up at a dark sky, trying to find the stars you learned about at the planetarium. you can’t make out any of them, only the faint twinkle of what must be planets. they are brighter than stars, you remember.

 _why?_

he turns to look at you, like he’s trying to memorise how you look. you know that look, because you’ve seen it on your own face too many times.

_then our goodbye would be further away._

you reach for his hand, lace your fingers through his. you always knew that there was a deadline to this, that once you make it through shido’s palace, he would leave. your days are not endless, as much as you wish they could be. there would be no reason for him to stay in tokyo if you succeed, and he’s never mentioned wanting to stay either.

not until now.

_it doesn't have to be goodbye._

his hand squeezes yours, like a silent promise.

 

* * *

 

it’s so strange to be vindicated, to have proof of madarame’s love for you, to know that you can paint again. akira was right, after all. he seems to have a surprising knack for that, and you think you should know better than to doubt him by now. if only it were that easy to believe in yourself.

lay out the foundations of a sketch, and build on it. turn it into something more. lay out the foundations of a new life, taken from pieces of the old. it is better for all the changes you have to make, stronger now. learn to be proud of all these things you have learned, however bitter the lessons were.

perhaps you cannot give up all the things you used to have, but maybe you never needed to in the first place.

 

* * *

 

when he leaves, he goes without telling you, goes somewhere you cannot follow.

you don’t get to say goodbye, after all.

you are even more aware of the passage of time in the weeks he is gone, how it seems to fly by and drag on. things slip through your fingers while all of you do your best to bring him back. you are too familiar now with how tightly futaba’s hands can cling to yours, how big the space he leaves behind. 

still, you press on. you will believe in him, as he has believed in you.

you look up at the dark winter skies and wonder if he’s looking at the same stars you are.

 

* * *

 

frame him between your fingers, something to remember. let him distract you, let him pull you closer until you are a breath apart. he always touches you so carefully, almost as if he's not sure he's allowed to. but you could never refuse him anything, least of all this.

he is warm under your hands. here, the bone, supporting and holding him up. here, the heart, beating steady and true. let him pull you in, wrap your arms around him. he is here, he is alive. feel his heartbeat against your chest, wonder if he can feel yours as well.

you learned the human body in an attempt to recreate it in graphite, charcoal, acrylic. you can name the bones and muscles under your hands. _scapula, vertebrae, trapezius._ you could trace the shape of it out on paper, but you think this feeling cannot be recreated or replicated, only experienced. so you press your face into his neck and breathe, feel his heartbeat steady against yours.

people might call it fate or destiny, but you don’t believe in these things anymore. fate is something you can change, destiny is not nearly as arbitrary as people might like to believe. the last year has taught you that you make your own fate, that you can change anything you want to change.

he is a miracle under your hands, in your hands. a flood of miracles in your life, changing you irrevocably. you are almost certain now that if it weren't for him, you would never have survived. you want to tell him _thank you, for being kind to me. thank you, for calling my name._

in the dusty attic that is his room, he kisses you. the late afternoon light filters in, overlaying everything in a warm glow.

 _you are my light,_ you tell him. it’s not all the truth, but there’s too much to tell him. words are not your gift anyways, so you can only give him something of yours.

it’s not nearly enough compared to all that he has given you, but it’s a start.

 

* * *

 

you don’t say goodbye at the train station. there is no reason to. you will see him again, you're sure of it. you watch him disappear behind glass and steel doors, a figure blurring into others.

frame this moment; the closing doors, the slow jerk of a train starting to move, the last glimpse of his messy hair, the suggestion of a smile.

this is not the last time you'll see him.

**Author's Note:**

> Any comments and kudos appreciated. <3 you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ewagan)


End file.
